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thanks for stewardship paper (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 05 Nov 1996 16:26:59 WST
From: Victor Guest <vic@daena.eepo.com.au>
To: Permaculture WA <perma@eepo.com.au>
Subject: thanks for stewardship paper (fwd)
Errors-To: owner-chrm-general@igc.apc.org
Precedence: bulk
Lines: 52
From: pdonovan@orednet.org (Peter A. Donovan)
Sissel thanks for the paper on forest stewardship contracting.
Lately I came across my notes from reading, some years ago, Morris
Berman's THE REENCHANTMENT OF THE WORLD (Cornell, 1981). It was an
influential book for me in its contrast between the conventional
scientific view and what Berman calls Batesonian holism:
conventional scientific view Batesonian holism
no relationship between fact and value fact and value inseparable
nature known from the outside; nature is revealed in our
phenomena observed out of context relations with it
Goal is conscious, empirical control Unconscious mind is primary;
over nature goal is wisdom, beauty, grace
linear time, infinite progress, we circuitry (single variables
can in principle know all of reality cannot be maximized);
we cannot in principle know
more than a fraction of reality
only matter and motion are real process, form, relationship
are primary
wholes are nothing more than wholes have properties that parts
the sum of their parts do not have
nature is dead nature is alive
and so on. Berman, who is a Canadian professor, also wrote in this
book:
Digital knowledge is not necessarily wrong in itself, but
pathetically incomplete and thus winds up projecting a
fraudulent reality. University personnel, and more broadly
the techno-bureaucratic elite of Western culture, are paid
pretty much in proportion to their ability to promote and
maintain this world view.
I suspect this may be changing, fifteen years later. Perhaps we are
in the midst of one of the great changes of all human time. Anyway, I
recommend this book.
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I thought this was interesting and complementary to HRM.
Holistic Management.
Vic
peter
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